This invention relates to data receivers of the kind including circuit means compensating for transmission disturbances in a carrier-modulated transmission system, which circuit means includes a correction circuit for correcting a previously equalized received signal, a decision circuit responsive to the corrected received signal to provide output data signals, a difference determinator circuit coupled to an input and an output of said decision circuit and a correction factor determinator circuit coupled to an output of said difference determinator circuit and an input of said correction circuit.
Phase shift keying (PSK)--in particular differential PSK (DPSK)--and quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) are presently used in many systems for data transmission. To represent n discrete data values, k different phase values are used by which a carrier signal is modulated at given clock times. The carrier signal is modulated to m different amplitude levels (for PSK: m=1) where n.ltoreq.k.m. The data values can also be represented by complex values distributed over m circles, with the zero point as the center. These complex values are then modulated by a complex carrier. Finally only the real part of the modulated carrier is transmitted, usually after filtering. A representation using complex signals for transmission systems with carrier modulation leads to a brief and clear mathematical description. In a technical implementation, however, pairs of real signals are used instead of complex signals. Preferably these real signals should be related to the complex signals according to the complex number calculus.
Assuming error free transmission, the discrete values transmitted would arrive at the receiver after demodulation of two carrier waves, shifted 90.degree. with respect to each other, by which a complex baseband signal is generated, at sampling instants which were suitably derived. Since disturbances such as: signal distortion (intersymbol interference), additive noise, frequency shift, phase jitter, phase hits, gain variation, always occur during transmission, a suitable means for error compensation must be provided in the receiver. It is practice in the art, to use equalizers for eliminating signal distortion (intersymbol interference). Some of these equalizers can adapt their characteristics to varying distortion conditions.
A data receiver of the kind specified is known from U.S. Pat. No. 4,091,331. In the known system the difference determinator provides an output representing the phase difference between the phases of the input and output signals of the decision circuit. This phase difference is fed to a phase error predictor circuit which includes a feedback path and which is controlled by a gain control signal adaptively set in accordance with the ratio between phase jitter and additive noise.
Although the known circuit does result in improved performance where the ratio between phase jitter and additive noise varies, the known circuit has the disadvantage that an undesirable high number of errors does still occur.